Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession

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discussed in biography

Browning’s first published work,
Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession (1833, anonymous), although formally a dramatic monologue, embodied many of his own adolescent passions and anxieties. Although it received some favourable comment, it was attacked by John Stuart Mill, who condemned the poet’s exposure and exploitation of his own emotions and his “intense and morbid...